How We Make Money

The four kinds of content on this site

• Editorial content — reporting, explainers, analysis, money guides, comparisons and reviews. Written by our desks, funded by the revenue below, and never paid for or approved by any third party.
• Display advertising — banner placements bought by advertisers or served through advertising networks, in fixed positions, always labelled “Advertisement”. The advertiser chooses the creative, not the page it appears next to, and has no knowledge of or influence over the surrounding article.
• Affiliate links — tracked links on money pages only. If you open an account through one, we may be paid a referral fee by the provider or its network. The link is tracked; the editorial judgement around it is not for sale.
• Sponsored content — material paid for by a commercial party. It is labelled as sponsored before it begins, kept structurally distinct from editorial, excluded from rankings, comparisons and editorial feeds, and never published under an editorial desk byline.

Affiliate commission in detail

Links on our money pages may become affiliate links, meaning Wallcrest Media could earn a commission if a reader opens an account after clicking. Payment may be a fixed fee per approved application, a share of revenue, or a flat referral fee. It comes from the provider's marketing budget and never changes the price, rate or terms you are offered.

At present these links are placeholders: no affiliate relationships are live, and no commission is being earned. When that changes, the disclosure on each affected page will remain prominent and unavoidable.

Display advertising in detail

We sell and serve standard display formats in fixed, height-reserved positions so advertising cannot push editorial content around the page. Advertising is clearly distinguishable from editorial content, cannot be styled to imitate it, and advertisers have no influence over what we publish or how providers are assessed. Legal, disclaimer and corrections pages carry no advertising at all.

What commercial money never buys

• Inclusion in a shortlist, comparison table or review.
• A ranking position, a rating, or a favourable description.
• Removal or softening of criticism.
• A link inside an editorial article.
• Advance sight of a review, except for factual right of reply.
• Any influence over which stories we cover or how we cover them.

How the separation is enforced

• Criteria for every money page are published before providers are assessed.
• Every product data point is traceable to the provider's own documentation and carries the date it was checked.
• Editorial staff carry no revenue targets and are not paid on link or ad performance.
• Commercial correspondence runs on separate addresses and never enters editorial decision-making.
• Complaints about commercial influence are reviewed by an editor not involved in the work concerned.

Why this matters to you

Commission-funded publishing creates an incentive to recommend whatever pays best. Our answer is procedural rather than promissory: published criteria, dated and sourced data, no unexplained scores, visible disclosure on every commercial page, and a strict separation between the commercial and research functions.